Last week, Governor Scott Walker signed a bill intended to significantly reduce deer baiting and feeding bans in counties that are dealing with chronic wasting disease.

As of now, the DNR enforces baiting bans in 43 Wisconsin counties, including the surrounding listening area, but the bill Governor Walker signed would lift bans for 15 counties.

Those counties that would be affected are not in the immediate area.

“I think it’s important to make it known in the area here that nothing has changed,” said Conservation Warden Mark Schraufnagel. “In Shawano, Waupaca, Oconto counties here we still have the baiting, feeding ban in place.”

The goal of the baiting ban is to slow the spread of CWD among deer by limiting the piles of food known to attract large amounts of deer to one place.

“It’s still not legal to have any mineral out, any salt, or to start placing apples, corn or soybeans any of that stuff,” Schraufnagel said. “It’s still not legal to have any of that on the landscape.”

With the bear hunting season around the corner, hunters are free to bait at bear sites, but only as long as proper guidelines are followed.

“Generally, for most bear hunters they put it in a stump that they’ve got buried in the ground and they put a cookie, which is a cutout of the tree on top of that with a big rock, and they put it on top of that, so it’s inaccessible to deer and other animals.”